IS EVIL RATIONAL?

DENNIS PRAGER

Ever since the 18th century and the dawning of the so-called Age of Reason, most of thebest-educated people in the world have been absolutely certain that reason alone will lead usto goodness and a good world. We dont we need a God. We dont need religion. All we need isreason. Evil, we have been told for almost three centuries, doesnt make sense. Its irrational.

Thats why youll often hear murderous dictators referred to as madmen and their evilregimes described as products of madmen; in other words, the very opposite of rationalmen. Stalin was irrational. Pol Pot was a madman. Maos genocidal Cultural Revolution inwhich he directed the killing of 50 to 75 million Chinese -- in peacetime, no less -- is routinelycalled madness. And the Iranian regimes calls for the annihilation of Israel are routinelydismissed as, you guessed it, irrational.

Meanwhile, good and moral things are always associated with being reasonable. But thisassociation of reason with good is wishful thinking.

Of course, reason might argue for doing good. But it might just as well argue for doing bad.Take a non-murderous example. Is it right or wrong for a student to cheat on a test? Its wrong,of course. But now answer this: Is it rational or irrational to cheat on a test?

The answer is not quite as obvious -- is it? After all, if you can get away with it, and it mightmean the difference between getting into a great school or getting a great job, cheating on atest may well be reasonable.

The same logic applies to participating in a shady, but lucrative, business deal or engaging ina marital infidelity. If you know you can get away with it, or simply judge that the benefits ofdoing something illegal or immoral outweigh the risk of being caught, why not do it?

Or answer this: Was it rational or irrational for a non-Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe during WorldWar II to risk his or her life to hide a Jew? We all know that this was moral greatness of thehighest order. But was it rational?

Not really. You cant get much more rational than self-preservation. Moreover, in all the studiesI have read of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust -- and I have read many -- Ihave never read of any rescuers who said that they did what they did because it was thereasonable or rational thing to do. Not one.

Reason leads to good only when you want it to. Just as it leads to bad when you want it to.Reason is just a tool. It is no more intrinsically moral than a knife. A knife can be used to .com Free Courses for Free Mindsmurder or to torture people. But in the hands of a surgeon, it can be used to save lives.

If you want to preserve liberty, then it is rational to fight and risk your life on its behalf. Andif you want to maintain a fascist or a Communist or an Islamist dictatorship, then its equallyrational to risk your life on its behalf.

And talking about liberty, it isnt reason that makes people value liberty. Many rational peoplevalue security, or order, or territory, or theocracy, or many other things much more than theyvalue liberty.

Reason can lead people to all kinds of conclusions. For example, asked if he would kill adisabled baby, a distinguished professor of philosophy at Princeton University responded,Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole. Can you offera purely rational reason why the professor is wrong?

The only reason I can offer is a belief that all human beings are created in Gods image andare therefore infinitely precious. But the preciousness of all human life is a belief, not anassertion of reason. The Greeks, the founders of Western reason, thought it quite reasonableto leave sickly babies to die of exposure. The baby would just be a burden on the parents andthe state. It was faith-based Jerusalem, the other parent of Western civilization, not reason-based Athens, that taught the world to keep sickly babies alive.

So, the next time you read of some terrible crime or some terrible regime, please dont dismissit as irrational or mad. Call it for what it is.